16x9 video in iMovie

[Grimace]

I am testing out iMovie for the first time - pretty sweet integration with the other iLife titles. *

Anyway, I am having some trouble with getting 16:9 to show up.* I took some video in 16:9 mode, but iMovie shows it as 4:3 - as does the export to iDVD.* But, when I imported the same footage through Final Cut Express, it showed up as 16:9.* What gives?* Does iMovie not support widescreen aspect ratios? Can I tweak in iMovie and then export to FCx? This is my first project so I think iMovie may be easier to learn. Any thoughts??

 

[Brother Michael]

Use Final Cut Express. It is better than iMovie (though don't get me wrong I love iMovie). iMovie is really meant for you have a home video of your kids birthday party and you want to make it look semi-professional. Or if you and your friends are goofing around with the camcorder. Of course thing I like doing with iMovie the most is take my digital pictures and putting them to music and then exporting them to tape (dont have a DVD burner) and playing them on the TV. A lot cooler than looking at albums.

Keep in mind the chain pretty much goes:

iMovie < Final Cut Express < Final Cut Pro

Course the price goes that way too

Mike

 

[pdpfilms]

Though i'm not positive, I don't think iMovie supports widescreen formats. I would just hop right into Final Cut, it's an amazing piece of software, and the learning curve isn't overwhelmingly great. Might as well start today, right?

 

[FlamDrag]

It's only an eensy weensy bit more difficult to learn iMovie Functionality in FCE. So if you already own FCE, I'd just jump right into it. Skip iMovie.

I had similar problems with 16:9 in iMovie, so I don't know how to make it work either! Sorry.

 

[yellow]

I rocked the pants off of iMove.. Don't get me wrong, it's a great program, but you'll hit the glass ceiling pretty quickly after your 2nd or 3rd movie. I'm currently learning FCE. It's more complicated then iMovie, and has a lot more bells and whistles, but it gives you finer control of your finished product. Just got a FCE book this morning to help me figure out transitions.

 

[Grimace]

sounds good - thanks for the advice. I'm having some trouble editing transitions between two songs in the soundtrack; I'm sure there is a way to do it, it's just a pain right now.

All MP3s sound *really* choppy, weird; I'll have to try actual CDs for background music.

 

[Rod Rod]

16:9 in iDVD and iMovie

iMovie is strictly 4:3.
http://www.danslagle.com/mac/iMovie/tips_tricks/6004.shtml

It's okay though, because that squished image is what's actually on the tape. If you can stand to look at the squeezed image from start to finish, do all your editing in iMovie, then set your chapter markers and export your movie as full quality DV (non-self contained).

To make your movie 16:9 in iDVD, follow these instructions:
http://homepage.mac.com/bruce.mckenzie/iblog/C1703310809/E880959544/

There are some potentially helpful comments linked under the article.

It seems like this method would only work on the "Best Performance" mode, which would limit you to a duration of 60 minutes.

One more note about audio: iMovie, FCE and FCP need 16-bit 48KHz uncompressed AIF/WAV. MP3, AAC and any other format will throw them off, making for tinny and choppy playback. Worst-case, transcode the compressed stuff into uncompressed, and of course the best thing to do is what you said, to grab the original uncompressed files.

 

[aswitcher]

I really hope iMovie gets a bit of a tweak next Macworld to cope with the many 16:9 prosumer dv cameras that are appearing, and to also gte a few more features like picture in picture and better rendered titles.

 

[pdpfilms]

All MP3s sound *really* choppy, weird; I'll have to try actual CDs for background music.

This happens too in FCP HD. For some reason it can't really handle mp3's that great. The fix is to open the mp3 in quicktime and convert to AIFF. It'll sound just as good as it does otherwise, but now you can edit with it (it's also about 10x larger a file though...).

Good luck!